Defining Interoperability

For me, the term interoperability means
how to bend 106-plus UNIX-type operating systems to work with
Microsoft's proprietary, non-RFC-compliant, all-too-often
frustrating systems. All the UNIX-type operating systems work
together most seamlessly, thanks to their adherence to standards.
But Microsoft's marketing strategy of “100% Microsoft” and their
deliberate barriers to interoperability cause no end of anguish to
system administrators, many of whom are of the opinion that “0%
Microsoft” would be the best goal for sanity's sake. Meanwhile,
Microsoft's hidden APIs are more hindrance than the moving target
that is Linux. Thankfully, teams of programmers, like those working
on Samba, have delivered us this interoperability successfully
despite Microsoft's best efforts. But complete interoperability
between Microsoft and Linux has a long way to go.

If your business is point of sale, with emphasis on sales of
a large number of varied products, you might want to take a look at
Freemoney. To preview this application, go to their home page and
their preview page. While this accounting package is feature-rich,
whether for web sales or in-store sales, setup needs a
lot of work and better documentation. You
won't be able to skip through this installation, but once
installed, you will be pleased with its ease of use. Requires:
interchange, web server, Perl, Perl modules: Bundle::Interchange,
DBD::Pg, DBI & Schedule::At, PostgreSQL.

If you know phpMyAdmin, then you know phpPgAdmin. This
web-based PostgreSQL administration is a port of the very popular
phpMyAdmin. It makes administration of Postgres a breeze.
Installation is simple and straightforward, and you can set up the
system to administer all the databases or just one. Requires: web
server with PHP and PgSQL support, web browser, PostgreSQL.

This program for children is a typing tutor. It features
falling fish with letters that Tux the Penguin must run beneath and
eat as they fall. For more advanced practice, you can substitute
words (generally three-letter words) to accomplish the same thing.
The graphics and game play are excellent diversions for children
while they practice touch typing. Requires: libSDL, libSDL_image,
libSDL_mixer, libm, libdl, libartsc, libpthread, libX11, libjpeg,
libpng, libz, libtiff, libvorbisfile, libvorbis, libogg, libsmpeg,
glibc.

The di utility, standing for disk information, will provide
you with quite a bit of information about your hard disk. Most of
the information mirrors what you get from the df utility, but not
all. Lately, with the addition of ReiserFS and ext3 to the kernel
(not to mention LVM), often I need to know what type of filesystem
I'm dealing with. This information isn't provided by df, but di
shows you this by default. The output format is also cleaner than
df, especially on a system with the horribly long devfs naming
scheme. Requires: glibc.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from folks who'd like to
convert 100% to Linux is the lack of a personal financial system.
Several good applications exist for business accounting, but few
for personal accounting. I can think of three, but they all use a
flat file database and only can be run locally. GnuLedger runs from
a web browser, so it could be run from anywhere in the world
(ideally using https). And because the data is held in MySQL, it's
fast and can be queried easily without using GnuLedger if you know
basic SQL. My only note about GnuLedger is that it (at least the
version I downloaded and tested) had no accounting tables at all;
they had to be created from scratch—not something your average
home owner wants to deal with. A comprehensive set of tables
properly linked for the average person would go a long way in
helping GnuLedger along. Anyone want to donate a schema they're
using? Requires: MySQL, web server, Perl, Perl modules:
Number::Format, DBI, DBD::mysql, Math::Currency,
Math::FixedPrecision.

If you have a motherboard with supported sensors (mostly ASUS
motherboards, but others are being added slowly), you can monitor
your system's health (CPU temperature, etc.) graphically. Living in
Panama, and particularly with systems in non-air-conditioned
locations in the summer, this utility shows at a glance if the
temperature is getting too high and a build or two needs to be
aborted. Works on multiprocessor systems as well as single CPU
systems. Requires: lm_sensors, libXpm, libX11, libm, glibc.

This month's choice from three years ago was easy. This is
the Burger King of FTP clients. It boasts both a text and graphical
mode, and it can use FTP (passive or active), SSH, SFTP or HTTP for
file transfers. It is threaded, so it allows for multiple
simultaneous downloads, can queue downloads, transfer between two
remote systems and much more. If you need to move files around a
network, you need to take a look at this application. Requires:
gftp-text: libglib, libnsl, glibc; gftp-gtk: libgtk, libgdk,
libgmodule, libglib, libdl, libXext, libX11, libm, libpthread,
glibc.

Until next month.

David
A. Bandel
(david@pananix.com)
is a Linux/UNIX consultant currently living in the Republic of
Panama. He is coauthor of Que Special Edition: Using Caldera
OpenLinux.